Exploring The Characters In Sh She's Boyfriend

Lily´s father taught her also many other life lessons, which shaped both Lily´s character and her attitude. Adam Casey wasn’t been dealt a pretty good hand, however, he managed to play with it. He made the best of it! Even Lily hadn’t an easy childhood, for she had to do at a very young age a good many chores and other things. She took charge of difficult situations and performed like a mother towards her younger siblings.

Lily shows her non-racist side in the very beginning of the book, after Rosaleen has been put in jail for spitting on a very racist white man’s shoe. She willingly sneaks into jail and attempts to free Rosaleen, but gets sent home with the racist and mean father, T. Ray. She once again tries to free Rosaleen, and this time sneaks into a hospital to free her. Lily is successful this time, and runs away with Rosaleen.

She is so focused on how she looks that she often feels like she is “impersonating a girl” rather than actually being one (9). Lily speaks with a wry and dry tone. Additionally, underneath her dry tone, she masters setting the scene with a bit of humor. For instance, when describing the trek into Tiburon she writes: “We started walking. If you think the country is quiet, you've never lived in it.

Once Lily accepts what she has done and learns that her mother's death did not make her a bad person, her conflict can finally be resolved. As a result of resolving her conflict, she is able to mature because of the struggle, just like other people are able to grow and evolve from their own mistakes. This is evident when she admits "Before coming here, my whole life had been nothing but a hole where my mother should have been, and this hole had made me different, left me always aching for something, but never once did I think what he'd lost or how it might've changed him" (Kidd 293). Lily finally realizes that her mother's death has not only affected her, but also her father, T. Ray, and the calendar sisters. Through the course of Lily's struggle, Lily learns a lot about life and matures into a wiser

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

Through use of indirect characterization, Lily’s words and actions reveal a pivotal part of her character: her clever intelligence. This first becomes evident after her African American friend, Rosaleen, spills a cup of her snuff spit on the shoes of a racist white man that was provoking her. The minister at her church is

Lily’s first meeting with the black Mary occurs when she meets the Boatwright sisters: August, June, and May. At that moment Lily feels the nurturing of a mother and a deluge of emotions rain down on her. She could feel all sides of her, favorable and detrimental because “that’s what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time,” (Kidd 71). Lily, for being barely an adolescent, at first is not capable of grasping the concept of people being both angelic and corrupt. At the beginning of the story she sees T. Ray as the human embodiment of evil. Counter to her initial beliefs, Lily learns that people are not as simple as she wants them to be. This is largely the result of the mothering force of August, which is a more physical representation of what the black Mary embodies. The black Mary illustrates Lily starting to see the world from a multidimensional perspective. In the same manner as the black Mary representing a mother for Lily, she represents a mother-like figure to all the Daughters of Mary. While the other Daughters may not have been missing mothers, the black Mary creates a family-like binding between them, keeping them together throughout even them most poignant times. The black Mary is a mother to all and all Lily wants in the Boatwright house is to be seen as one of them. Ultimately, “they didn’t even think of me being different,” (Kidd 209). This acceptance

Even though Lily has a low self esteem due to her appearance and the way she feels

Since her mother died she has had to put up with her abusive father who doesn't really care about Lily. Having to not only deal with this but the fact that she doesn't have any friends in school doesn't really help. “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life.” Lily says this in the beginning of the novel. This is an important quote showing Lily’s bravery because Lily’s life has been profoundly affected by her mother’s death. This statement suggests that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying. She grew up without a mother and the taunting guiltiness that she killed her own mother. In some ways I share this quality with Lily. At times I can be a brave person but like everybody else I'm not always so brave. One time when I was brave was when I was first coming into the high school. I was always so nervous at just the thought of high school so when the big day came I was very anxious. I was brave enough to get through it all and now I'm more comfortable in the

She is expressed as dealing with “teenage problems” if I do say so myself a lot of issues that most teenagers have: identity, popularity, self-consciousness, and parental issues. The 14-year-old throughout her story feels a deep sense of longing for her mother as she did not know her, because she died when Lily was only 4 years old. In Chapter 1, Lily talks about how she misses her mother, and how she feels completely responsible for the fact that she doesn't have her. This quote, "This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away," is significant to the whole plot, because it helps us understand one of Lily's main concerns and desires. I myself have lost a parent at a very young age, and struggled to comprehend what happened, and how it would effect me through the course of my life. Lily Owens notices that she does not fit and is held back from that fact that her father does not care about Lily's life nor her needs. In Chapter 1, Lily indicates that she is “..worried so much about how I [she] looked and whether I [she] was doing things right, I [she] felt half the time I [she] was impersonating a girl instead of really being

This is not a good sign for Lily because she does not have love, respect, or acceptance from anyone.

In Chapter 10, we can see that Lily is starting to become enmeshed in the Boatwright’s family and culture, as a result of the very traumatic events that unfold. To begin with, during the night when Lily is sleeping, she wakes up with a start, thinking about May. She first thought about how she had died, but then thought about all the good memories she had of May like she had known her for the majority of her life. On page 199 it says "I closed my eyes, all the best pictures of her came to me. I saw her corkscrew braids glistening in the sprinkler, her fingers arranging the graham-cracker crumbs working so hard on behalf of a single roach's life." This indicates that Lily felt like family to May and that she knew May and what type of person

August is a strong role model for Lily because she uses appropriate language for and around Lily. When Lily is feeling unlovable and is explaining to August how her mother passes, August tells Lily how she is loved by saying comforting words like these: “But you’re not unlovable [...] you are still the most dear, most lovable girl I know.” (Kidd 242). This quote reveals that August wants Lily to know that she can be loved and that August is putting the impression on Lily that she deserves to be talked to better than the way T.Ray talks to her. This makes Lily so

Throughout the novel, Lily is able to depend only on herself and her own strength to get through tough times. When she was only eight years old, her family was hit by a flash flood that threatened their home. Her father

During chapter one Lily tries to escape her lost care, hatred, and love from her father and heartbroken memories. Lily escapes by running off in the middle of the night and lies down in the orchard with all of her mother’s little traces that were left behind. A human being’s natural instinct when they are feeling hurt, pain, sad, or simply just want to escape they escape towards nature. In life sometimes you are not able to handle the pain, like when Lily throbs in pain physically and emotionally from her father, and burden memories. When Lilly is under the sky all she feels is peace, care, and her mother right beside her. Just to be free and to survive by resting under the trees with peace soothing her mind and heart Lily is in her own little